


Just Around The Corner

by Im_The_Doctor (Bofur1)



Category: Video Blogging RPF, Youtube RPF
Genre: Advent, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Blood, Canon Compliant, Christmas Eve, Conspiracy Theories, Creepy, Creepy Anti is creepy, Darkness, Death Threats, Desperation, Determination, Developing Friendships, Dread, Fear, First Christmas, Getting to Know Each Other, Gift Giving, Holidays, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, In which I take a lovely holiday like Christmas and make it really really creepy, It's Not Paranoia If They're Really Out To Get You, Late at Night, Loyalty, Mid-Canon, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Multiple Selves, Panic, Paranoia, Plants, Protectiveness, Surprises, Symbolism, Winter, Worry, reassurance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-21
Updated: 2017-12-21
Packaged: 2019-02-18 00:10:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13088343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bofur1/pseuds/Im_The_Doctor
Summary: Anti, just like the other Egos, always looks forward to the holiday season, especially Christmas. For him, the fun begins as soon as the clock strikes December 1st. For the rest of them, that's when they need to brace themselves for whatever the Glitch has planned to make them suffer.





	Just Around The Corner

Jackieboy noticed something wasn’t right as soon as December 1st rolled around. Whereas Anti would— _should_ be prowling into the kitchen for his breakfast of bloody meat like any other day, today he strode into view with a spring in his step, one which set off several of Jackieboy’s internal alarms. The rest sounded the call as soon as the Glitch peered around at the other Egos, his fangs bared in a smile.

“H͞a̶pp̢y ̵holi͝day͜ ̷season̵,” he purred, his voice crackling and breaking with a much more noticeable amount of static than usual.

The older Egos didn’t answer him, of course. They could scarcely dare to wonder what he meant by those words; their minds were already racing for an explanation of his optimism, but they couldn’t help being distracted when Jameson made the mistake of tipping his hat in response to the “well-wishes”. Chase gave Jameson a warning look, but it was too late; the young gentleman’s gesture had caught Anti’s eye.

“At least so̸m͝eone͡ here has s҉ome͢ c͢ommon co̶urt̵e̴sy̷,” he remarked, his smile widening as his head tilted. A glitching half of his head stayed contorted, flickering against his shoulder even when he moved, flinging open the fridge and grabbing his meat plate, strolling casually back out to eat alone.

“JJ, Anti doesn’t deserve you being _polite_ around him. You may not remember it, but he tried to attack you when you showed yourself to the fans. He’s evil,” Chase began in his firm “dad voice” to Jameson as Jackieboy glanced uneasily at Marvin.

“Okay, I know he glitches more and more as the holidays get closer, but that was worse than usual,” the magician announced what they were both thinking. “He shouldn’t be like that until…what, two weeks from now?”

“That’s how it was last year, but you know him. He likes to keep us guessing,” Jackieboy mused grimly, moving to sip his coffee and then hesitating when he noticed how Schneep’s cup was shaking between his hands. “Hey…” he murmured, reaching across toward him. “This doesn’t mean—”

“He did not need a holiday to attack me,” Schneep reminded them shakily. “Take me away from you for weeks ’till you find me…It was _August_. There was no reason, rhyme…What if it’s like that for one of you? Chase, last year—it was nothing for Anti to poison his eggnog, was it? He spent Christmas in hospital!” Looking a bit ill, he peeked down at his coffee and abruptly pushed it away. “And the year before that, he sabotaged my sled…I nearly break my neck, and I’ve heard of the year before, when he tried to strangle Marvin with the tinsel—”

Marvin winced at the memory, instinctively tugging on the knot to his cape, and Jackieboy growled, “That’s not going to happen again. We’re all gonna be safe because we’re gonna protect each other with everything we have.” Schneep didn’t look convinced, so Jackieboy softened his tone, explaining, “That’s the difference between then and now, Henrik: last year, the year before that, the year before that, not all of us were here. Now, I can’t think of a better group. We know what he’s capable of.” He looked around the table, meeting each pair of eyes and concluding emphatically, “Not even Anti is strong enough to take on _all_ of us.”

***

Seeing as all of them had been rather unsettled by Anti’s “holiday cheer”, the next few days were spent on edge and their nights were spent sleeping _very_ lightly. As such, it was no surprise that Jackieboy immediately lunged upright in bed, reeling back a preemptive fist, as staticky strains of “Silent Night” echoed through the halls.

Not so far away, Schneep stared with terrified eyes toward the door of his lab, his late-night reading falling through his fingers to land with a thump on his desk.

Chase, meanwhile, curled tightly into himself and covered his head with his blankets, not quite waking but sensing in his subconscious that something was wrong.

Marvin padded gingerly out of his room, his wand casting the dim hallway in an eerie green glow. Every shadow, any shadow, could very well be Anti, taunting him with a game of hide-and-seek. Who was seeking who? The music, hauntingly slow, continued looping as Marvin crept through the tunnel of darkness just outside the light’s reach. That was when he felt fingers brush the back of his arm. Yelping, he whirled around, already poised with a spell—only to slump in relief when he found the wide-eyed Jameson standing behind him.

“Oh, it’s you! Make some _noise_ when you’re coming, why don’t you?!” he hissed. He knew JJ’s aura would have canceled out any noise the gentleman might have made, but at the moment he was too high-strung to care about semantics. Jameson didn’t object to it either; in fact, he didn’t mince any words, as he might have under any other circumstance. His sepia speech slide was bright in the darkness.

**“Marvin, is this Antisepticeye?”**

Marvin blinked at the question for a moment or two, startled by it. It was uncanny…He forgot about Jameson sometimes. Not the man himself, of course, but sometimes he forgot that Jameson was new at this. It was only now, with his hands wringing in front of him, moustache twitching nervously, tousled hair hanging in front of his eyes, that Jameson looked his age.

At last, with a sad smile falling onto his face, Marvin sighed, “Don’t you worry, JJ. You’ll learn to sense it. When it comes to things like this, it _couldn’t_ be anyone else.”

Jameson looked as if he was about to reply, but a squeal of static stopped both him and the music. As soon as the last echoes of “Silent Night” faded away, Jameson looked back to Marvin with cautious anticipation.

 **“It’s stopped…”** his slide stated the obvious.

“That doesn’t mean he’s done,” Marvin warned, moving to skirt past him but unprotesting when Jameson spun around and clutched at his arm, keeping pace with him. The pair of them scoured each room of Egos Central again and again until dawn broke, but they found nothing.

***

A few days later, Chase pried his eyes open with a struggle, wanting nothing more than to sleep for another few hours. A promise was a promise, however; he was going to spend this morning helping Marvin decorate. Jackieboy had left to patrol the city in the wee hours, he knew, and they were planning to surprise him with a Christmas message on the top of the roof, one he would instantly see when he flew home.

He would get to show Jameson how it was done, he realized, and that thought made him pick up the pace just that much more. As he flung open his door, however, he stopped up short just before tripping on something that had been left outside his door.

Bewildered, he crouched, picking up the beautiful white poinsettia and examining it from every angle. When he found the small golden card peeking through the leaves, he couldn’t help but wonder if his kids had insisted their mother send him a gift. That was something they would do. The calligraphy printed on the card _did_ say, “With Love from Me to You”.

The signature underneath it was as sloppy as a child’s, but once Chase deciphered the first two letters, he dropped the card and the plant as if they had burned him. Leaping to his feet, he sprinted down the hall and round the corner, only to see Marvin standing motionless outside his door, an identical white poinsettia at his feet.

“Marv,” Chase gasped, jabbing a thumb over his shoulder. “Anti—”

“I know,” Marvin murmured, gesturing to his left with nothing less than revulsion. “Jackie got one too. I wouldn’t be surprised if—” The door to the lab slammed only a moment later and Marvin winced. “That’s what I was afraid of. Chase, check on Jameson; I’ll try and calm Schneep down until Jackieboy can take over. I’ll see if he can come home early; we need him.”

It wasn’t too surprising that they had all received the strange gifts, Chase discovered when Jameson met him halfway between their rooms, thrusting the plant out helplessly for him to examine.

They ended up surprising Jackieboy with quite a different message when he got home, but as much as they poked and prodded and pulled at them, there was nothing special about them as far as they could see. If Anti was giving them, there _had_ to be a reason. What could he gain from this? Was it just to make them paranoid?

“What should we do with them?” Chase asked quietly as Jackieboy paced the length of the kitchen. “I…don’t think he’d appreciate it much if we threw them away.”

“Set them right where you found them,” Jackieboy ordered tersely. “He’s playing some sort of game and if we skip our turn, he’s bound to take it for us.”

Thus decided, they planted their gifts next to their doors and left them there—ignored, but certainly not forgotten. A light coating of dust fell over them and the cards that went with them ended up smudged and sticky on the floor as the Egos walked over them. Four days later, on December 11th, Chase stepped in another sticky substance. It was a dark puddle, one which he recoiled from immediately as he glanced wildly toward his poinsettia.

It was still white in some places, but others were now stained red— _dripping_ red.

Chase bolted, leaving streaked, bloody shoeprints in his wake, but before he could even stretch out his hand to bang on Marvin’s door, he was shocked to find that both his and Jackieboy’s poinsettias were still purely white. When he looked further, toward the lab, Schneep’s was untouched too. Jameson’s was unstained as well.

Why him? Chase wondered frantically as he pommeled Marvin’s door in an effort to wake him. Why him? _Why him?_

***

Three days later, on December 15th, he was no longer alone. Schneep’s explosion of panicked German could be heard in every part of the house and for once, none of them had to wonder what he was saying.

***

On December 18th, it was Marvin’s turn.

***

December 21st, Jackieboy came unspeakably close to punching a wall when he found the same, and his red boots were stained an even darker red.

***

On Christmas Eve, Jameson was quivering where he sat on the couch between Schneep and Marvin, staring wordlessly at the sullied plant he had set on the coffee table. There was no explanation for it, no taunt, no attack…They had hardly seen Anti at all this month and during whatever fleeting glimpses they had gotten, he had been glitching and fizzing so violently that he was practically intangible.

All they had were bloody plants.

“I…I don’t know what we’re supposed to do about this,” Jackieboy admitted at last, his gritted teeth making it clear that he hated admitting his helplessness. “I can’t pound him into the ground if I don’t know where he _is_.”

A long silence followed these words, but eventually Chase ventured weakly, “T-Tomorrow’s Christmas. I know this isn’t like other years, but…he’s never hurt us on Christmas. All we can do, at this point, is try to salvage it, right?”

No sooner had he spoken those words did the first notes of “Silent Night” begin to play, very low and muffled, as if they were almost out of earshot. Bare seconds later, the noise faded back out, and the group shared a moment of sheer astonishment.

“Call me crazy,” Marvin breathed, “but I think he might’ve just _agreed_ to that…”

Chase huffed a small laugh and Schneep quietly slid an arm around Jameson, who looked significantly more reassured, ducking his head in relief.

Jackieboy wasn’t about to buy that for a _millisecond_.

***

Christmas Day passed without incident. Jackieboy did his very best to enjoy it the way the others did; there were a few precious moments when he was able to keep his attention on them, smiling at their reactions to their gifts and accepting their hugs of gratitude, but it wasn’t where his attention _ought_ to be and he knew it. The game wasn’t over. It was never over and they had taken their turn by enjoying their holiday. It was Anti’s move.

One by one, they made it through the stockings…the gifts…the dinner…the cleanup…and, at long last, their goodnights. Each of them wanted nothing more than to stay with the others and hold onto the lingering warmth and joy of Christmas Day, but eventually they all had to sleep.

None of them would, for each returned to his room and froze dead in his tracks when he saw that the stained white poinsettia had vanished—replaced by a big, beautiful _red_ one. Jackieboy clenched his fists so tightly that his palms bled inside his gloves and he lifted his head slowly as his enemy assembled himself across from him.

“It’s al͜mo̡s͞t ͡t͝i͘me,” Anti chuckled, playing with his knife and shifting his weight back and forth. “Are you r̢ea̶dy̸ to rin̢g ̶in t҉h̨e New ͡Y͝ea͘r? I wonder what’s w̶ai̕tn҉g̸ just around t̴h͢e cor̢n͝er…especially for t͜͢h͏a͟t̢ _J̛͘a̵m̡͜e̕͠͡ş̡o̴͡n_.”

“I wonder,” Jackieboy agreed venomously. “What I _do_ know is that if you come anywhere near him, I’m going to hunt you down and it won’t matter if you try to glitch your way out. I’m not going to stop until I shove my fist down your throat so far and so fast that I cauterize that nice little slash of yours from the _inside_.”

Anti laughed again, sounding almost impressed with the threat, and then his form convulsed and dissolved into nothingness. He wasn’t gone; Jackieboy could still hear his static buzzing around the room, circling him, predatory, and the hiss that followed was mocking.

“No, ͟yoų ͝won’t, _hero_. ͡You'͘re j̧us̵ţ l͝i͘ke ̡th͞e҉m. You'͟l͏l jus̴t ͜wa̷tch̷.͟”

**Author's Note:**

>  ~~I probably shouldn't have written this because it's the creepiest thing I've ever written. I was a member of the Overnight Watch and nothing has really been the same since...~~  
>  Buuuut I hope those of you who like spooks enjoyed! Feel free to leave a kudos or a comment down below to tell me what you thought; I'd love to hear from you!


End file.
